


Bringing the Picture into Focus

by thegizka



Series: Batfam Week 2018 [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Batfam Week 2018, Canon Compliant, Domestic, Fluff, Gen, featuring Titus the dog, it's comics canon though so it's flexible, slightly ooc Damian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 05:21:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15503208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegizka/pseuds/thegizka
Summary: Duke agrees to do Alfred a favor but gets a little lost along the way.





	Bringing the Picture into Focus

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Batfam Week 2018 Day 2: Trapped.
> 
> It barely qualifies for the prompt, but I'm going to run with it anyway.
> 
> Also, I have barely read any Duke, so I don't know how accurate this portrayal is. I just know I love him and would love to see more of him! And Damian might be a little OOC too, especially at the incredibly cheesy end. Oops!

Duke closed the door to yet another closet, this one stuffed with tablecloths and fancy placemats.  He’d been living in the manor for a month and still couldn’t find his way around without two or three unintended detours.

Jason had given him a hand-drawn map when he first moved in, smirking.  “Trust me, you’ll need it.”

When Duke pulled it out one day, frustrated after his fifth attempt to find the library (it was supposed to be HUGE, so why was it so hard to find??), he felt the sharp shame that came with a sense of defeat.  He had felt Jason’s challenge when he gave him the map-- _ Think you can prove me wrong?-- _ and he couldn’t be sure the brash vigilante hadn’t secretly set up a surveillance system so he could make fun of Duke later.  But he was unbelievably fed up with running into guest rooms and unused sitting rooms, and he had homework to complete for a case, so he pulled the crumpled paper from his back pocket, prepared to endure whatever harassment would follow.

Of course the map was useless.  The hand-written blueprints were uneven and smudged, and Jason’s labels were barely legible.  He also had nicknamed half of the rooms (Damian’s room, Duke noted, was  _ The Demon’s Lair _ ) but had left the other half unmarked.  With a sigh, he stuffed the map back into his pocket.  At least he couldn’t be shamed for actually  _ using _ it.  He would just have to stumble through the halls and rooms on his own.

Fast forward a few weeks, and Duke was still stumbling through figuring things out.  He could make it to the front door, his bedroom, and the closest bathroom with no sweat.  He was pretty sure he knew where the dining room was, and the main sitting room with the entrance to the cave had been drilled into his brain.  He could even make it to the library with only the occasional mistake. Anything else, though, and he was utterly lost.

Take, for instance, Bruce’s office.  (He had a normal office? Did he ever  _ use  _ it?)  Alfred was going to dry clean a suit that had been thrown in the office, but he had to meet Dr. Thompson for an early lunch, so he had asked Duke to locate the suit and bring it to the foyer to be dropped off during afternoon errands.

Duke had been told the office was somewhere on the third floor near the back.  It sounded simple enough. Of course, the main staircase only went to the second floor.  To access the third, fourth, or the half-attic above that, one had to locate a number of secondary staircases placed sporadically across the upper floors.  Duke hadn’t been able to figure out any sense to their placement yet. But he knew that Damian’s room was on the third floor, and he always headed towards the east wing after patrol, so that’s where he started.

He had hoped the staircase would be out in the open, not hidden behind some door, but luck was not on his side.  He half-hoped there would be a sign on the door, or there would be some obvious wear on the handle for use, but Alfred’s meticulous cleaning ensured uniform sparkle on all hardware.  So it was trial and error again.

Which is how he had ended up opening the door to three closets, a bathroom, and a small sitting room.  He was growing increasingly frustrated and nervous with each door. Both Cass and Tim had their rooms somewhere on this floor, and he’d hate to barge in on them.  They weren’t unfriendly or anything, but they tended to keep to themselves, so he didn’t feel comfortable popping unexpectedly into their rooms. If only he was still in the west wing!  The only confirmed bedrooms on his side were Jason and Dick, both of whom were rarely at the manor and would be none the wiser if he accidentally stumbled into their rooms. Although he wouldn’t put it past Jason to rig his door with an alarm or trap.

He turned to try the next door and was met with a heart attack.  Cass had appeared beside him, an eyebrow raised slightly in curiosity.

“Oh hey, Cass,” he greeted, trying to hide how unnerved he was.  (How did she  _ do _ that, just appear out of nowhere without a sound??)

She was still standing there with the same slightly curious look on her face.

“I’m, uh, looking for the staircase up to the third floor,” he admitted, still too surprised to be totally embarrassed at his obvious ineptitude.  “I have to grab something from Bruce’s study for Alfred.”

Cass nodded, expression going neutral.  He didn’t  _ think _ she was judging him, but he was still learning how to read everyone, and Cass had a rock-solid poker face.

She turned and opened the a door further down, revealing a narrow but well-lit ascending staircase.

“Thanks,” Duke said, relieved to leave this floor’s hazards behind him.  She gave him a small smile before closing the door behind him. With the first obstacle conquered, he mustered his confidence and headed up.

He was back to thorough confusion when he exited into a large, lofted room with tall glass windows and walls covered with artwork.  A gallery? He had no idea the manner had one! But he really shouldn’t be surprised. If there was one thing he had learned from spending time with Bruce, it was that the man had almost everything.  Except a sufficient supply of Pop-Tarts.

He had to cross the entire length of the room to get to the exit onto the main hall.  The art in the gallery was a sporadic mix of styles and quality. Oil paintings, crayon drawings, charcoal sketches, watercolor landscapes, and classic portraits peppered the walls.  Some of the finer examples of the Waynes’ collection of pottery, antiques, and statues added dynamism to the room’s displays. Some looked like museum pieces, while others were obviously home-made.  He wasn’t surprised Bruce would have such a sporadic taste in art. In many ways, he was a man subject to his whims.

Duke moved to exit onto the third floor hallway but nearly ran into the door instead.  He looked down at the door handle in his hand and turned. It barely wiggled, a sure sign that it was locked.  He glanced along the seam to see if it was simply a matter of a mechanism needing to be switched, but he didn’t see anything.  It was one of those strange old doors that required a key, probably a relique of the manor’s early years. (Honestly, this place was so weird--updated with the best tech in some areas and frozen in the ‘40s in others.)

No worries.   He’d just slip back down to the second floor and find a different stairway to the third floor.

Oh.

The stair door had locked behind him.

Duke simply stared at the door he had just come through, feeling slightly betrayed.  For a brief moment, he thought Cass might have snuck up behind him to trap him in or purposefully led him into this tangle, but nothing he knew of her led him to believe she was that malicious.  It was just a stroke of rotten luck. (Nothing new there!)

So what to do about it.  He let his eyes wander the strange gallery as he thought.  Of course his phone was still in his own room, safely tucked away a floor below him, and he wasn’t yet in the habit of carrying any of his Signal equipment on his person when not on patrol, so it wouldn’t be easy to contact anyone to let him out.

If he shouted, would someone hear him?  Though the building was older, Alfred ensured it was well-kept and sufficiently insulated.  Chances are Cass wouldn’t hear him from the next floor down. He wondered if Damian was in his room.  He hadn’t seen him yet today, but that could mean anything, and he didn’t want to bother  _ him _ unless it was necessary.  He had heard too many horror stories from Tim.

He would try to pick the lock first.  True, he didn’t have his equipment on him, but maybe there was something in the room he could use.  He wandered along the outside wall, gaze raking across the amalgamation of art, hoping to find a protruding sliver or errant wire.  Like most of the manor, everything was in good condition, the frames securely mounted to the walls, nothing in need of repair. So there was nothing he could pry apart and use for himself, unless he wanted to desecrate all of Alfred’s careful work and upkeep.  He wasn’t desperate enough to do that yet.

As he searched, he couldn’t help but look at the paintings themselves.  He could see that there was some logic in their arrangement at least. Pieces by the same artist were grouped together, then by stylistic similarities.  He seemed to have started in the less professional section. He didn’t recognize most of the names, and there were only one or two pieces by each artist.  In some ways the strokes of paint and charcoal felt experimental or uncertain, as though the artists were still determining what they wanted. There was an imbalance of too much simplicity and over-complications.  He knew Bruce liked to feature local talent in his charity events and suspected most of these pieces were from them. He wondered if the artists had grown in confidence since then.

Duke shrank back a little from the floor-to-ceiling windows as he passed them.  He told himself he was getting a better angle to see if the curtain rods and hooks offered any promise.  Truth was he was still nervous about heights. It had gotten better since officially jumping into this vigilante thing.  Bruce and Dick had been helping him acclimate to heights, and he felt more confident in the Signal suit. Here, though, the clear panes connecting directly to the floor had caught him slightly off-guard.

Yup, those curtain rods and hooks were definitely too far to reach or be useful.

The very center of the wall was less crowded.  The entire strip between two of the windows seemed dedicated to a single artist.  Pencil and charcoal sketches were the chosen medium. A few pieces were framed, but the majority were exposed parchment that had been tacked up on the wall.  Some of the edges were slightly frayed as though they had been ripped out of a sketchbook.

Studying the content, he was surprised to recognize the subjects.  There were several of Titus and Alfred, Damian’s dog and cat, in various positions of repose or excitement.  There were a few of Bruce in surprisingly intimate moments: lounging in an armchair with reading glasses perched on his nose and a book in his hand,  standing at a window with a coffee mug in his hands and hair still messy from sleep, a close up of his face with one of his rare and genuine smiles. Alfred was there too, doing chores and, in one striking scene, relaxing with a newspaper and cookies.  Dick was there in various states of laughter. Cass looked soft while caught in a nap. Jason’s eyebrows were scrunched as he studied some papers. Even Tim was there, immersed in a video game with a strangely focused look on his face while Stephanie smirked beside him.  The scenes were incredibly real, as though the artist had been able to freeze and record instants Duke had simply glimpsed the past few weeks. Whoever had made these had an eye for the secret moments.

Enthralled, Duke studied the pictures closely.  Even in the sketches of flowers or empty benches from the garden, there was a strong sense of life to them.  This artist created with more confidence than the previous examples, a confidence bred from natural talent and precise practice.  There was something about the crisp lines that was familiar, and it pulled at the edges of his thoughts. The artist had to be someone close to the family to capture so many intimate moments, but there was no recognizable signature, just a sequence of curved symbols scribbled unobtrusively into a bottom corner of each.  The nagging at the back of his mind continued, something telling him he had seen that mark before. The answer was right there, if only he could put the pieces together…

The realization dawned on him like the sun cresting the horizon.  The only person (besides himself) absent from the pictures was Damian!

Duke was surprised--not that Damian was skilled with pencil and paper, but that he would spend his time capturing mundane moments with sensitivity and perceptiveness.  He looked at the images with new respect. They showed a softness to Damian that he rarely displayed in person, and he suddenly felt a little shy at having stumbled across his personal slice of the gallery.

“What are you doing?”

Well speak of the devil!  Duke hadn’t heard Damian unlock and pull open the hallway door.  His green eyes were narrowed, arms crossed around a piece of parchment he held.

“Oh hi,” Duke greeted, feeling a little awkward at being found staring at Damian’s art.  “I got locked in here accidentally on my way to grab a suit from Bruce’s office for Alfred.”

“Tt,” the younger boy scoffed.  “Were you planning on just sitting in here until you starved to death?”  He pushed the door open a little farther and approached. Titus followed him in from the hallway, a chew toy clamped happily in his jaws.  He wagged when he saw Duke and happily accepted some ear scratches in greeting.

“I was looking for something to pick the lock since I left my phone in my room.”

“So you’re useless without your phone?  There are other ways to communicate with people, you know.”

Duke just shrugged, ignoring the slight sneer in Damian’s voice.  “I wasn’t panicking or anything. Besides, I wasn’t sure anyone was around to hear me shouting or pounding on the doors.”

The younger boy just grunted, thoughts turning to the paper in his hands.  He scanned the wall before them to evaluate the blank spots, determining where his new masterpiece would fit best before carefully using some painter’s tape on the back to stick it in place.  Duke watched quietly, curious to see the new image. Dick was sprawled in one of the armchairs, beaming. Barbara was leaning against the chair back, laughing, a few strands of hair falling around her face.

“You’re really good,” Duke complimented, admiring the careful shading and linear dynamics.

“I should think so.  I have spent nearly as much time honing my artistic prowess as I have studying the blade.”

Duke gave him a funny look.  Did Damian just reference a meme, or was it simply a quirk of his speech?  (Was he actually trying to connect to another person??) He seemed less aggressive than normal, and when he had spoken, his tone was more careful than condescending.  Like the moments he captured on paper, Damian was in one of those rare softer, intimate moods. It was a disconcerting feeling, being this close to Damian in both a physical and metaphorical sense.  Disconcerting, but not unpleasant.

“I used to doodle a lot.”

He didn’t know why he shared that.  He had only ever doodled out of boredom, marking his notes with little cartoons to pass the time.  He wouldn’t consider himself an artist, especially not of Damian’s caliber, though a few of his friends had complimented him on occasion.  But that’s all it was, a way to pass the time, not to express the fleeting truth of domestic moments.

“Used to?”  Damian asked suddenly, breaking into Duke’s reflections.

“Huh?”

“You said ‘used to’.  Do you no longer ‘doodle’, as you call it?”

“Well, life’s been a bit crazy lately.”  Duke rubbed his head, trying to remember, if he even  _ could  _ remember, when he had last been bored enough to doodle.  It must have been before the Robin Wars, several months ago.  It felt closer to a lifetime ago.

“Did you enjoy it?”

“I suppose so.”  He shrugged. “I mostly did it whenever I was bored.  I didn’t study it or anything like you.”

“Hm.”

They stood observing Damian’s collection in comfortable silence, Titus chewing on his toy by their feet.  Duke didn’t want to break the peace, glad of the rare chance to feel connected to someone in this family (and it was  _ Damian _ of all people!).  It was easier to think he might have a place in this obnoxiously large house amongst this hodge-podge of a family.

“You said you were on a mission for Alfred?”

“Yeah.”  He was reluctant to move on.  He hadn’t seen over half of the gallery and couldn’t help wondering what other surprising treasures could be there.  But he had a job to do, and of course he wasn’t going to disappoint Alfred.

“Come Titus,” Damian commanded, leading the way out of the gallery and locking the door behind them.  Separated from his artwork, his normal haughtiness and rigidity were returning, though he did help Duke locate the study and the suit, then gave him directions to safely return downstairs.  Maybe it wasn’t as hard to get through the antagonistic outer layers of his personality as Duke had originally thought.

 

\--------

 

A few days after that encounter, a new picture appeared on the gallery’s walls.  The style was drastically different, more cartoon-esque than the realistic sketches around it.  The subject was new, too. A young man lounged on the floor, absentmindedly petting the dog lying beside him.  The lines were more hesitant, but they conveyed a vitality reminiscent of the surrounding images. It was different, but the essence was the same.

A small messaged was scrawled in the corner:   _ You were missing someone. -D _

A week later, yet another new piece arrived.  The original artist was back, sketching a young man as he stood studying a wall of pictures.  The subject was relaxed, hands in the pockets of his hoodie and the smallest of grins on his face, as though he was reading the subtext that the artist had marked into his work.  He looked natural, like he belonged.

Scribbled on the back, out of sight, were just a two words.   _ Not anymore. _


End file.
